Hi everyone! I have had a very busy week. I just wrote President Hale my weekly letter. It tells about many of the things that are going on, so I will just send that to you and build on it.
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Hi! Things are going well right now! Peter Septembre was confirmed this week and he is going to get interviewed for the Aaronic Priesthood next Sunday. We have some of his friends being baptized, so we are going to get him to baptize them. That will be awesome. There is no better way of keeping a member strong that by fellowshipping him, giving him something to do in the ward, and teaching him the word of God. We are going to take him out on exchanges with us this week. He will be passing the sacrament in two weeks. We have Mirana Reazard being baptized this coming Sunday! She quit her job because she wasn't being paid for her work, so she will be home this whole week. She came to church yesterday! We are having Sarha Pierre, Mirana's Cousin's Daughter read out of the book of Mormon every day. Plus we are getting several members to call Mirana and talk to her. We have a lesson with her tonight and a strong member hopefully coming with us. We are helping her strengthen her testimony and her confident in the wonderful decision she is about to make.
We had 4 investigators come to sacrament meeting, plus 4 more who came to the other two meetings as well! We are planning on helping many more to come next week. This is going to be a very good week for that!
We have been working the members hard. I love the members here so much! We are having Sarha Pierre read to Mirana (she read two chapters out of the Book of Mormon in Creole for her!!!!!), plus she has been bringing a friend with her to church. We are doing a member present lesson with her and her friend Theresa. We will go early and do Active Member training with her. We did an AMT with her on Saturday too! We go over to the Pierre's house every Saturday morning, so we will keep Sarha pierre and her Mom strong in the work. Mirana will soon be a strong, active member with a powerful testimony of Jesus Christ.
We go over to Mama Julien's house every Sunday night. We always use her to help us with the work. She is such a wonderful Haitian women! She is so funny. She has been fellowshipping Moisena, Peter's Aunt. She called her on the phone a few times and talks to her at church. Today we asked her to do the same thing with Mirana. We did an AMT with Mama Julien on using Preach My Gospel. We gave her a copy! She likes it. The week before we asked her to give a Book of Mormon to someone she knew. She gave it to her neighbor, Dottie! We were so excited to hear about that! I love it so much when people keep their commitments, including the members. We went over to Dottie's house and she said she read the book and enjoyed it very much! She is big into reading and she was glad to have something to sit down with and read. We have a member present lesson with her on Thursday, I think. Mama Julien is coming over. Dottie is black, but she doesn't speak Haitian Creole, and Mama Julien doesn't speak English very well. Mama Julien has been coming to English class though. We are trying hard to push that by the way. It is challenging, especially considering that many Haitians don't have cars. If all of the willing Haitians had cars, I would die happy. That in and of itself makes this work so difficult, especially church attendance. Many Investigators and Members want to come so bad, but they can't. We have been working on getting people rides. By the way, we have an awesome investigator who lives in Coral Springs named Michelle. She is awesome! Her daughter Beraldine and her neice Duline are both investigators too. They don't have a car and they live very far away. Brother Dacosta says he can give them a ride every week! I am so happy about that! Michelle has a baptismal date already, and Beraldine and Duline will be next. We also had Bro. Dacosta's wife fellowship an 18 year old girl named Nica. We met her on Saturday, and she is awesome. She enjoyed church for her first time and she is coming again next week. I saw her in relief society. We needed to be in there to translate for Mirana and Michelle. She brought three siblings with her too!!!!! They are coming next week! That will be so cool! Sister Dacosta will come with us to see Nica this week, and Peter Septembre will come with us to see her brothers. He will be a great fellowship for them.
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This week there were specialized training for the Leadership in our zone. I was with Elder Chandler for two days. It was a lot of fun. We contacted some awesome people, and we also contacted some very weird ones too. There was one person we contacted who had a friend who just died of breast cancer and he wants to go back to church and be more involved in that. Another person says that he believed in Jesus Christ but had a tainted testimony and wanted to gain it back. There was one person in a wheel chair who we contacted and we started to talk to him about our message, and he said, "Get away from me Satan!" Another person said he met missionaries in Africa (I don't think they were LDS Missionaries), and they were influencing everyone's beliefs and changing people's ideas. He was very negative about the whole thing. There were several homeless people I have contacted in the last few days. There is a very large group of homeless people in southern Florida.
Just the other day, after the training was over, Elder Bolz and I stopped the car at a gas station and there was this homeless woman on the curb, her name is Virginia. Her boyfriend got sent to jail, her dad had kicked her out of the house four days earlier, and she had nowhere to go. She said that she had been praying all night for God to send someone to help her out. We told her that we were the servants that he sent to help her. We taught her on the side of the curb, we got her phone number, she told us that she was just going to be at this gas station, and we rode off on our bikes. (She has a cell phone. I don't know how a homeless person can have that. She was living with her dad not too long ago. I am thinking that it will be cut when the bill is due.) When we got back several hours later, she was resting behind the bushes. We asked her if we could buy her food, but she refused. If I were her I would have said yes right away. I hope she is getting food. We called her yesterday and she answered the phone, so she hasn't starved to death yet. We are going to pass the referral over to the other elders, and they can continue to keep contact with her.
We rarely use our bikes. I have only had a few rides on mine for the past month. Elder Bolz and I have the car, and the other Elders just ride their bikes, their area is more condensed than ours. With Elder Chandler, we used the car the first day (my area) and they we worked in his area the next day during specialized training. I rode my bike during that one day more than I have for the past month. We really need to use the bikes more often. We only have 1100 miles per month and we are running short. It is hard because we have three main places in our area where we have appointments, and we usually go to all three in one given day. However, we can stop using the car inside each subdivision and just ride our bikes to each appointment. That will help us conserve miles. However, we are usually running late and we have been having long appointment. We need to cut down a lot. We have so much missionary work to do that it is crazy. We have at least thirty investigators or more right now. It is so hard to help them all. It is nearly impossible. But the Lord will help us accomplish His work.
I love you all very much! I have to go now. Bye!
Love,
Elder Seamons
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